


The End of the Line

by alicekittridge



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Brief Sexual Content, F/F, Heavy Angst, POV Second Person, Past Tense, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:34:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27555409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alicekittridge/pseuds/alicekittridge
Summary: There comes a point in time when one realizes their own weight.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 5
Kudos: 62





	The End of the Line

**Author's Note:**

> I've had a hellish week, and I suppose this work is me working out all those feelings, but also the ones I feel about this particular scenario. This deals with Dani slowly fading away, and how she notices it affecting Jamie. I prefer to stick a bit close to canon, so sorry if this isn't much of your jam. 
> 
> I must also apologize for the mistakes; I stayed up till 2 AM finishing this and maybe spent thirty minutes editing. But either way, mind the tags, and thank you, again, for reading xx

**T** here comes a point in time when one realizes their own weight. It hits suddenly, like an unexpected wave when one is swimming in the middle of the ocean, and they realize the series of events leading to the wave are all in a perfect line. But how to stay afloat, wonders the swimmer, when your life preserver might go down with you? When you’re tired of fighting against the waves?

You’ve been floating for ages, the seas calm, but lately the waves have become choppy, and what were once clear skies are now cloud-filled. And the fog… That fog is thick and it’ll just keep getting thicker, until you can’t even see what’s in front of you. And if there is a lighthouse—which you’re certain there is, on some days—the light comes in and out of focus, a candle getting brighter and then dimmer in a breeze. The light, of course, being Jamie. Always Jamie. Your lighthouse. Your anchor. Your poor, burdened anchor, who looks as tired as you feel.

The guilt hits you when she comes home, opening the door with a long sigh, tossing her purse onto the couch. You notice the dark half-moons underneath her eyes, the result of staying up with you in the middle of the night when you’d woken from a night terror. If you close your eyes, you can still see the monochrome of it, some beautiful, long-haired woman hovering over you, face screwed up in effort, a strong, damp hand clamped over your mouth and nose.

“How’s it goin’, Poppins?” Jamie asks.

Papers are spread on the round kitchen table, accompanied by accounting books and expenses receipts. You remember, suddenly, you’d said you’d have the work done by the time Jamie got home. There’s more than half still to do, and a long pencil line disrupts the muted colors in the accounting book. You shake your head to clear the fog. “It’s uh… I’m sorry. It’s not done. I…”

“‘S all right. Shit takes time, doesn’t it?”

“Not this much.”

“There’s always tomorrow.” Her hand settles on your shoulder, warm from the early autumn sun she’d walked in. “Take a break. Help me decide what to do for dinner. My head’s empty.”

You hum. Lean your head against her forearm. Her skin is warm underneath your cheek. She smells like lilies and soil and berry hand soap. “Okay,” you murmur.

There’s a drawer in the kitchen, just below the knife holder, that bears an abysmal amount of takeout menus. Some are from tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurants that are no longer open that neither of you felt like tossing out. Others are from restaurants you frequent. Appetite being what it is, nothing calls loud enough for you to hear, so you pull one at random and hand it over.

“Right,” says Jamie, giving it a glance. “Chinese it is.”

You eat dinner on the parlor floor, small boxes of fried rice and noodles and various flavors of chicken spread between you, chopsticks clicking to each other. Jamie is a pro with them now. You’d had to teach her how to use them. It was at a sushi restaurant in San Francisco, a name you can’t remember, but you recall the distinctly Asian décor and Jamie’s sighs of frustration.

“I’m too fuckin’ white for this, Poppins,” she said. “Better off with a fork.”

“You’re holding it wrong,” you said, smiling. You took the top stick from her hand and set it aside, allowing her to focus only on the bottom one. “Hold this one like a pencil. Mm-hmm.” You picked up the other one. “Keep it like that. Now, let this one rest on top of those two fingers, and use your index finger to pinch it to the other one.” She did. “Just like that.” You helped her snag a salmon roll between them, but she did the work of bringing it to her mouth.

You can’t remember when it’d finally clicked for her. Only that it had.

Jamie cracks open the fortune cookies. Passes one to you.

“If it’s a bad one,” she says, “I’m burnin’ it.” She takes a bite of the cookie first. You’d told her, once again in California, that it would bring bad luck if she didn’t. Jamie reads, “ _Let your heart give away its biggest secret today.”_ She sighs. “Well shit.”

Yours says, _“A very bright future is ahead of you.”_ You laugh. Not with amusement. Just at the irony. You flick the small piece of paper away into the shadows. It lands with a soft _click._ You ask softly, “Is yours wrong, too?”

“No,” Jamie says. “It’s bang on.” A mask of nervousness descends upon her face, but you notice the nuances of excitement, too. “I was thinkin’… We could get the paperwork this week. Fill it out, have someone witness the signing… I mean, it’ll take a bit for the official certificate to come in, but…” She trails off, both giddiness and nervousness dancing on her features and in her gestures.

“We’ll celebrate,” she continues, hands clasping yours. “Splurge on a fancy bottle of wine. Somethin’ vintage.”

You like her dreams. They’re big and grand, a painting waiting to be seen in a gallery.

“And we’ll call Owen. He’ll shout on the other end of the line, I’m sure.”

The image pulls a smile from your lips. “It’s wonderful.” You lean to kiss her. The Lady, blissfully, is silent, tucked into some corner or other, claws retracted, dozing. You feel Jamie’s touch on your face. The soft press of her mouth against yours. Had this been earlier, much earlier, when you were more wholly yourself, you would’ve pulled her into you until you were both sprawled on the rug and made love there, boxes be damned, until, with much effort, you rose on unsteady legs to clean up and stumble to the bedroom, where it might continue. But you are fading like ink in water, and there is no pull of desire.

“Oi,” Jamie whispers, holding your face between gentle hands, “what’s the face?”

You shake your head. “I… can’t give you what you want.”

“You think it matters?”

“It should.”

“I’ll tell you a secret, Poppins,” she says. “Sex is like dessert. Somethin’ you want and can have. Or choose not to have. There’s a reason it’s had last.” A tear falls warmly onto your cheek. She catches it with the pad of her thumb, wiping it smoothly away. “It’s the main course that’s most important.” She kisses your forehead. “Sweets come in other forms.”

Like gestures. Like little kisses she gives you in passing, or a touch that lingers.

Sleep comes easier that night, with her reminder. With her soft warmth and flannel shirt that’s gone soft from the many washes it’s had. The only dream is a string of bubbles rising to a freshly disturbed surface, obscuring two figures standing on a shore you can’t see. Like they’re floating.

—

You go into work less and less. You do what you can from home: filling out orders in the book, writing in the specific details, filing paperwork and doing accounting. It is an altogether different weight, sometimes overwhelming. And the less you go into work, the more you find yourself getting lost in your own head, thinking of water and pale hands and feeling a simmering impatience. The drifting happens in the oddest of moments—in the middle of discussing an arrangement, or going over the different types of flowers that would suit the mood for an engagement party, or in the middle of the most mundane things. Cleaning the house. Preparing an edible dinner. Plucking the drain in the bath.

No, you think, but the thought dissolves. You feel her stirring. Waking again to find herself still trapped. You barely hear the front door open, the _thunk_ of Jamie’s purse as it lands on the loveseat, the _clop, clop_ of her boots, the closing of your bedroom door so she can change into house clothes.

The Lady’s reflection appears in the faucet.

You stare at each other.

Sounds from the bedroom float to your ear. The squeaking of the bedframe as Jamie’s weight settles on it. A few seconds of silence followed by a sigh, and another, heavier one.

Once, moons ago now, on a day you had felt the Lady’s weight more prominently than you had since leaving Bly, Jamie came home while you worked on the books, diligently adding up the expenses by hand with paper and pencil. Your mind drifted until there was a strange, silent bubble surrounding you. You were barely aware of the bedroom door closing, of the sounds that happened shortly afterwards. At least until telling sighs reached your ears and told you she was not, in fact, changing out of her work clothes.

The bubble gone, you sat and listened, everything sharp, a familiar knot tying itself in the pit of your stomach. It was quiet, what she was doing, but not quiet enough; you stood just as you heard her breathing pause.

You opened the bedroom door. She was a silhouette in the late evening light, trembling on the heels of a first, intense orgasm, gasping from both it and surprise. It took you three strides to stand over her.

“Dani,” Jamie breathed, “I’m sorry—”

You cut her off with a kiss. The interruption was a pleasant surprise, and the mood that filled you was one you were glad for. You felt like yourself, in moments like these; you could just be Dani and Jamie, not Dani with the Lady crawling under your skin and pulling you back into the fog.

She wrapped you in her arms, even as you worked her already unbuttoned jeans from her hips, even when you slid down to follow your hands with your mouth, keeping the pace slow so as not to overwhelm her. Still, she didn’t last long, already taut from the wake of the first, your name tumbling from her mouth in an ecstasy-filled whisper, the sounds thereafter muted inside her hand. You cursed the thin walls of the apartment and people’s irritating nosiness.

“Christ,” Jamie sighed when you came back up to kiss her.

“Hmm,” you said, smiling a little now. “Thank you for the interruption.”

“Workin’ out some frustrations?”

“You could say that.” You brushed a few strands of hair away from her eyes. “Our business isn’t cheap.”

“I wouldn’t want it any other way.” She kissed you softly, cupped your face tenderly between her hands. “Want anything?” she murmured.

“Just you,” you said, helping her fumble with the button on your jeans so she could slip her hand between its sides.

You do not go to her.

You hear her come, a string of stilted curses and harsh, stuttering breaths, but it is far away, on some shore you cannot reach. There is only the empty tub and the silver faucet, in whose face is the Lady. All stringy, wet hair and pristine white dress. Faceless.

Jamie will wash her hands at the kitchen sink. Pat her damp face and neck dry with the dish towel from the stove. Attempt to make dinner, thinking you’re still freshening up, only coming in when she realizes you’re taking an awfully long time, or when she needs your rescue.

However much you want to, you find you cannot move. Even though you’re cold. You stay as if glued to the spot, knees pulled against your chest, chin resting on them, staring at the woman who is not you.

If I reach out, you wonder, tilting your head to the side, will I feel you? Will you feel like metal or will you feel like mud…?

“Dani?”

You gasp. Your hand falls back to your knee.

“Hey.” She wraps a fresh towel around your shoulders. “Been here a while, huh?”

The Lady isn’t in the silver face. You see you, damp hair falling around your shoulders, expression that of someone washing up on shore and surprised to find they haven’t drowned. “A little while,” you say. “Is dinner…?”

“I’ve got it started, at least. Haven’t had pasta primavera in a bit.”

“Last time you made it, it was a wreck.”

Jamie smiles. “It was, wasn’t it?” She adjusts the towel, dabs at a few lingering water spots on your cheek. “Let’s get you outta here, cold girl.”

Warm dinner smells fill the apartment. Bell peppers and squash and zucchini, all tossed in a skillet with bowtie pasta. Wine accompanies the dish, a red you’d gotten from Owen when you’d gone to Paris to announce your engagement. Jamie lights a plain white candle and sets it in the middle of the table.

“Thank you,” you tell her. “It’s good.”

“Didn’t set off the smoke alarm this time,” Jamie says. “It’s an improvement.”

Despite how good it is, you can only stand a few bites and a few sips of wine. You pass your plate to Jamie, who clears it, bringing back a memory of the warm kitchen at Bly, Hannah and Owen at the sink, Jamie picking over what Flora and Miles left on their plates.

“Our human Hoover strikes again,” Hannah said. “Less work for us.”

“Not just good at gardenin’,” Jamie said. “I’m always happy to make less work for you.”

Later, you dry the dishes, keeping your back to the sink, averting your eyes from the plates’ shiny faces.

“I uh…” Jamie begins after a minute. “I could use your help with somethin’ tomorrow, if you’re up for it.”

“Hmm?”

“Just an arrangement. I need your expert eyes.”

The phrase brings a faint smile to your lips. Your eyes haven’t felt expert for a while. And what joy there was in assisting with arrangements feels almost forced. The emotion itself is muted, along with everything else. Yet you ask, “What flowers?”

“Roses. Simple enough.”

Jamie brings home Starbucks in the morning. Blonde roasts, with cream and sugar. Old habits, she says, as she hands your cup over. You think of the greenhouse after your first kiss. The warmth of the autumn sunlight filtering through the windows.

“You ready?” Jamie says.

“Yeah.”

The walk to The Leafling is only a few blocks. There’s a light breeze. It rustles the leaves on the oak trees, whispering through the branches. The sunlight is warm. The weather is a perfect mix of summer and autumn, but you think it isn’t you who is wholly absorbing it. The tempest of the Lady seems soothed by it, and when you walk by the market displaying the morning’s freshly picked apples, you see a field of green and a girl in a white dress sauntering after a man in clothes long out of fashion. The image disappears as soon as it had come, as brief as the scent of apples.

The shop opens at nine. There’s a little over an hour until then. Jamie uses it to go over the arrangement, wondering which flowers should be used to compliment the roses, whose color is as crimson as blood. She says the woman whom it’s for doesn’t want a stereotypical banquet of roses—stereotypical, in this case, meaning roses paired with baby’s breath, despite the combination being a classic—and Jamie rolls her eyes as she says it. “But in America, the customer’s always right,” she continues, “as much of a pain in my arse as it is.”

“Well…” You think for a moment. Baby’s breath is white. White and crimson are aesthetically pleasing when paired together. “What kind of tone does she want to set?”

“Somethin’ original. I know,” Jamie says, throwing up her hands at your puzzled look, “not very helpful. Please don’t shoot the messenger.”

You think for a minute. “We could try something smaller and… white. Daisies, maybe.”

Jamie nods. “All right.”

You hold the roses in a plastic sheet, telling Jamie where to place the daises so it’ll look the best. Two between the roses in front, and two between the three roses in the back. She’s careful not to touch either flower’s petals. She steps back to admire it from afar. This close to you, the roses are overly sweet, the smell cloying, reminding you of clothes stashed away, of how the petals were once used to mask the scent of death. Jamie’s mouth moves in the shape of _Y’know, I think that is the least stereotypical thing we’ve made._ Her smile is small, but proud and bright. You see it. All you can think of is a deathbed.

“You all right?” Jamie says. “Does it look wrong?”

You shake your head no.

Gently, she takes the banquet from you, setting the bunch carefully in an empty glass vase. “What’re you thinkin’, Dani?” she asks.

The words are soft when they leave you. “They smell like death.”

The mask of worry becomes darker on Jamie’s features, and you wonder, after you’ve told her, if she’ll think every flower in the shop reminds you of death. You hate the feeling coursing through your chest—worry that she won’t want you here, in the place you’d dreamed and built together, that she’ll want to hide the flowers for the sake of keeping you comfortable.

“That’s a new one,” she says quietly, and you nod in agreement. She sighs, gives the arrangement a quick once-over. “We can go with the daisies, then. It looks pretty. Romance and new beginnings.”

The banquet that had been the two of you once gets picked up later that morning by a man in his mid-thirties planning on proposing to his girlfriend. He’d looked happy, you think, sinking into darker thoughts, love making him punch-drunk. Their future stretched like a highway before them, time not a question on their minds but something infinite.

—

On a Sunday, when The Leafling is closed, you accompany Jamie to pick up the paperwork. Nervousness travels between you like electrodes. You feel it on the walk to the county clerk’s office (?), and inside it. You’re joined by other couples, all with the same goal in mind. It all feels odd. Not in a bad way, but in a surreal way. Time, it seems, has been as kind as it can, letting you get this far. But the cruelty lies in the unknown, in that dark space that asks, _How much longer?_

Your handwriting is not what it used to be. Neat cursive has turned into half-legible chicken scratch; next to Jamie’s curling print, it embarrasses you. Such a silly thing turns your cheeks into burning coals.

“Oi,” Jamie whispers, sensing as she always does, taking your hand in hers. “Least it’s not Russian cursive, yeah? _Completely_ illegible.”

It gets a laugh. A soft one, but a laugh nonetheless.

“There we are,” Jamie says.

You get home and Jamie pulls a bottle of white wine from the liquor cabinet. A Gewürztraminer. The bottle is green, the label white.

“Where’d you get that one?” you ask.

Jamie pauses in pouring the first glass. “Napa Valley.”

“When…?”

“Three years ago.” She turns to the fridge and plucks a postcard down. Classic lettering, with **NAPA VALLEY** spread across the bottom. The picture is of acres of grapevines, with a large white building in the background.

“Livin’ here wouldn’t be so bad, would it?” Jamie said. A pale arm hung out the rented Land Rover’s window, whose view was of the rolling hills and the sharp bunches of grapevines. “We could get pricey wine whenever we wanted.”

“And wine drunk every night,” you said, leaning to kiss her cheek.

“Sure, Poppins, if you want a hellish hangover the next day.”

“God,” you say, this time covering your face with both your hands. “Ninety-seven. I…” The water’s coming in fast. Too fast.

Hands find your shoulders. “Dani,” Jamie says, her tone serious but soft, “it’s all right. It’s okay to forget things. Memory’s fallible.”

Fallible. It is. And everything else, too, if one wanted to get philosophical about it.

“Come on,” she says, leading you to the couch. “Let’s give the religious nuts a reason to complain further about us disturbin’ the Sabbath with our agenda.”

Jamie fetches a book from the small shelf in the room and carries her wineglass over. She propels you down until your head is lying in her lap, one hand tracing lines over the soft hair just above your ear. Exhaustion pulls at you. Your eyes drift closed as she flips through pages. Darkness fills them when she reads from a page.

> _Before time runs out, my rose,_
> 
> _before Paris is burned and destroyed,_
> 
> _before time runs out, my rose,_
> 
> _and my heart is still on its branch,_
> 
> _in this night of May on the quay we must sit_
> 
> _on the red barrels in front of the warehouses._
> 
> _The canal across fades into darkness._
> 
> _A barge is passing,_
> 
> _my rose, let’s say hello,_
> 
> _let’s say hello to the barge with the yellow cabin._
> 
> _Is she on her way to Belgium or to Holland?_
> 
> _In the cabin door a woman with a white apron_
> 
> _is smiling sweetly._
> 
> _Before time runs out, my rose,_
> 
> _before Paris is burned down and destroyed,_
> 
> _before the time runs out, my rose…_
> 
> _People of Paris, people of Paris,_
> 
> _You mustn’t let Paris be burned and destroyed… 1_

__

—

The call comes on a Tuesday. Jamie, detaching herself from the last of the dishes that need drying, turns business-like, posture stiffer, voice more professional.

“Clayton residence,” she says.

“Flora residence,” Flora said, attempting to sound adult but failing. “Hello?”

A pause.

“Speaking.”

Another.

“Oh.” Her tone is lighter. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

“What was it?” you say once she’s hung up.

There’s a large smile on Jamie’s face. “It’s the certificate.”

You smile, too, as much as you can. She captures it between her hands, pressing her forehead to yours. She says, “I’ll go. You stay. Find us something to celebrate with.”

“Oh…” You trail off. There’s plenty of wine in the liquor cabinet. And candles on a little iron shelf in the bathroom. An idea forms. “Sure you can trust me with that?” you ask.

“Definitely.”

She changes into something more appropriate while you light the candles. Pauses next to you to tell you she’ll be back. Kisses your hair. Says, “Keep those burnin’, yeah? And make room for two.”

Time slows while she’s gone. And despite the better day, the fog rolls in, filling your head while the tub fills with water, until you’re leaning, and the Lady is your shadow. You are dead to the world until Jamie, home again, shakes you away. The tub has overflown. Water pools on the tile, travelling over it and to the wood of the hallway. You didn’t realize, you say apologetically, to which she says water’s easy to clean up.

You ask if she sees her.

She says, “I only see you.”

You nearly collapse into the steadying arm she holds against your back. “I’m so tired, Jamie,” you tell her. And you are. You’ve been treading water too long. There is no anchor, except the one you cannot cling to anymore. No lighthouse. No life preserver. Jamie declines your words, firmly, fighting back tears. Shaking her head as if the very action will change the course of everything.

“No one’s going anywhere.”

But I’m sinking, you want to say. I’ve been sinking since I invited her in. I’ve been clinging to everything I could, and it still isn’t enough. You shake your head, too. “What if I’m here,” you whisper, “sitting next to you… but I’m just really her?”

“One day at a time,” Jamie answers. The age-old mantra.

—

There comes a point when one realizes their own weight. It isn’t so sudden anymore. You’ve become used to it. One day at a time. Treading water, still. Looking for the lighthouse. For the life preserver, finding her living, too, in shadows she won’t talk about. And still you go to her. You wrap your arms around her and rest your chin on her shoulder. Her familiar smell fills your nose. You want to confess everything into the soft skin of her neck, adding more to what you’d told her the night she’d come home announcing your union was civil, but it would be too much, right now. Too much weight for your Atlas to bear. You hold her as tightly as you dare, and you whisper, “I love you.”

She squeezes your hand. _I know,_ it says. _I always have._

You fall asleep with her beside you, your arm thrown over her, lightly gripping her favorite flannel shirt.

The Lady, awake again, brings you claws and teeth.

A dream of water. Jamie standing over it. An arm, clearly yours, breaking the surface and grabbing her, pulling her to the depths.

You wake with your hand reaching out for her neck.

You relax it. Knowing, now, it was high time to let the life preserver go.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. "Before time runs out, my rose..." Hikmet, Nazim, and Fragos, Emily, Editor. 'Poems of Paris.' Alfred A. Knopf, 2019. (Just an excerpt.) 
> 
> I've also borrowed a few lines of dialogue from the show. I own none of those lines.


End file.
